I am pondering here, working out something I've been thinking about.
Since I've been really scrutinizing my beliefs, I've had many deep speculations about the way things “are” and how much of what “is” is because of the story I tell myself.
I mean, I know and I believe that my thoughts create my life. But to what extent? That is the question.
I’m about to get personal here, so please honor my vulnerability and know that I don’t share this story lightly. The work that I do is deep and personal, and in order to effectively share these ideas, I have to let you in a little.
I was talking to my mom today about men. My mom and I, and many other women I know, have had the belief that men, as a gender, are not capable of fidelity. I believe the easy verbiage is, “men are cheaters”. I know I have heard stories of men making it to the “til death do we part” line without straying and I think I’ve heard a few stories of marriages that were good marriages over all, but those stories are not the norm in my experience.
I wonder though, is the whole reason I even have this thought because I witnessed infidelity in my home in my teens from someone I idolized, therefore causing a huge shift in my world view and thus my beliefs?
Science shows through the observer effect that our thoughts are the mechanism that change energy from a wave form to a particle form, which is equivalent to the phrase thoughts create things. Literally. Since our thoughts create our lives, then it follows that our beliefs create the very fabric of our lives. It has been shown in countless studies that what comes to pass in our lives is only within the construct of our belief systems. Very rarely does anything happen that is not in alignment with our beliefs. We may believe that we should have a thing or that we want a thing, but the lack of that thing is most often in alignment with what we actually believe. If we dig deeper into the WHY the thing hasn’t shown up, we can usually find the thoughts that align with our current reality.
I also have witnessed how a change in my story changes my reality. For example, I used to tell the story that once I saved up a larger sum of money, “something always happens” that I have to spend it on. Either my engine blows, or I have to bail someone out of jail, or I get an unexplainable couple-thousand-dollars water bill. But somewhere along the way, I decided to change that story. Now I can save money. I actually believe I’m good at saving money now. I also remember having the belief that I’m just not lucky. Guess what? I heard myself saying that one day and decided, I am lucky. I’m not the luckiest person in the world, but lucky things DO happen to me and knock on wood, I’ve not uttered “this is just my luck” in eons. As I write this now, I think - Why not decide that I am the luckiest!? What do I have to lose? I am the luckiest!
I’ve not had the greatest of “luck” in relationships, either. When I went through the Divine Intelligence Process three years ago, I was at the end of my last, most recent relationship. Thanks to that process, I was really able to see, clearly, like 1-2-3 how I was choosing relationships that mirror unhealthy familial relationships. Now, after having seen it in that way, I realize that I chose these relationships because they felt familiar. They felt like “home”. And “home” is where you hang your heart, right? Only, a heart hung in the last home I knew as my home before adulthood was no place to hang my heart. A heart hung there was broken. Hence my slew of bad relationships.
I want to say, the men I was in these relationships are not bad men in the least! They are GREAT men, actually! I love and appreciate them for the people that they are and I honor them. I am better for having known them and I wish them all the love their hearts can hold! But the issue was largely within me. I brought these subconscious beliefs to my relationships. So while I wanted a long-lasting loving, supportive relationship, my beliefs of “men are not capable” of that would cause wedges between us that I just couldn’t see or articulate because subconscious beliefs are just that. Below consciousness. I was trying to create something I did not believe in. But I didn’t realize that I didn’t believe in it. Wow!
All that being said. I would love to believe that I am “fixed” now. That that huge realization of why I chose the relationships I did, and why they turned out the way they did makes relationship disappointments for me a thing of the past. But I won’t really know what this realization did for my romantic life until I have another romantic relationship.
One thing I do know, though. I need to have really ironed out the beliefs I had in relation to men and romantic relationships if I want to be happy in a relationship long term. We can’t say things like, “well, maybe he’ll surprise me”, or “I hope he proves me wrong”. That is NEVER the case. Behind those statements is already the story of “I know what I want won’t happen”. I hear so many women say these phrases, and I’m guilty of having said them myself. But now I know better. If he’s got to prove me wrong, the problem is ME. Aack!
I intend to sit down and journal about this. Journaling is the best way, aside from a coaching conversation, that I know of to get clear on your thoughts and beliefs. There are a few other topics within myself that I feel conflicted about that I need to gain clarity on. The questions that I believe are going to bring this clarity are:
What is the whole story I am telling about this issue?
What are my earliest memories of this type of story regarding this topic?
What do I want the story to be?
How am I going to change it?
I look forward to really digging into these stories to see what comes up. Once I am clear on these four questions, I can work on telling a new story.
I’ll let you know how it goes.